Works Minister Alex Scott has admitted, finally, that work at the Berkeley Institute construction site is behind by two months.

The admission comes after months of reports and concerns that the multi-million dollar site was well behind.

In the meantime, a Police investigation into claims made public by Mr. Scott that an approved United Bermuda Party candidate had tried to coerce a civil servant into handing over documents on the project seems to be going nowhere.

The two issues are connected. The Works Ministry has been under pressure since the contracted was awarded to Pro-Active Management Systems to prove that the relatively untried firm could handle the work. The UBP's Roger Russell is alleged to have told a civil servant that a raid was going to be made on the Works Ministry's offices in connection with the Berkeley project and the civil servant was going to be "the fall guy". Mr. Russell denied the allegations and made a series of his own, which were in turn denied by Mr. Scott.

The fact that the project is behind schedule and there seems to be little sense of urgency in getting it back on line gives added ammunition to those who said Pro-Active should not have been awarded the contract in the first place.

The second concern, of course, was that Pro-Active had not submitted the lowest bid. Now Mr. Scott needs to come clean and say what exactly the state of the project is.

He has said that the Works Ministry will now focus more resources on the site, after holding meetings with the general contractor. That begs the question of where the resources will come from and what they are; are these resources coming from Works, or from the general contractor?

If the project is two months behind, why aren't the workers on the site putting in extra behind to catch up, especially while they have good light in the evening hours to do so? Mr. Scott has said you can't make up lost time. But you can catch up by having more people work longer.

Mr. Scott needs to answer the following questions:

Exactly how far behind schedule is the project?

Is the project on-budget?

How many workers are working on the site and is his department satisfied with the staffing levels?

What steps are being taken to ensure that the school will be open for students in September, 2003?

Finally, having learned that the Police have made little headway into the allegations concerning UBP candidate Roger Russell, will he be pursuing the matter further? And if the Police have not gotten anywhere, will the Government, on behalf of the aggrieved civil servant, be taking civil action?

Pro-Active Management president Arthur Ebbin has said that he believes the Berkeley project has been turned into a political football. He is probably right.

But that does not mean that there are not justified concerns about the project. Tens of millions of dollars are being spent. Because the school should open in time for the start of the school year in September, timing is vitally important.

Because Mr. Scott has vigorously defended the selection of Pro-Active and its approach to the project, whether or not it can be completed on time and on budget is a crucial test of the Government's management skills. For all of those reasons, Mr. Scott needs to give a full accounting of the project's progress.